Introducing our new Graphic Designer, James Nixon

I’m delighted to introduce our new Graphic Designer, James Nixon to you all. Will you join me in giving him a huge welcome?

James joined team Flourish in January and since then has been working incredibly hard to create some of the beautiful illustrations for our own brand and our clients work as well as creating some gorgeous website designs. He’ll be sharing some of his work with you later this week (I’ve challenged the entire Flourish team to start sharing some insights into what they’re up to) but I thought it might be nice for you to get to know the person behind the work.

We were immediately inspired by James’ passion for design, his keenness to learn and his attention to detail. James is one of those rare, rewarding types who actually wants a critique on his work because he knows it will make him a better designer. Those are the kinds of designers we love to have in our team and we’re lucky that each and every one has that same attitude.

A grounding in photography

James’ first passion was photography and he studied a foundation degree in moving image and photography at UCA Farnham before graduating from Falmouth University in Fine Art Photography, the best university for photography in the country. What James loved about photography was the creativity in the darkroom and he tells us he spent many a happy hour in that darkroom creating images. Falmouth are known for their creativity and this has certainly rubbed off on James!

You can see his final piece here http://jamesnixonphotography.co.uk/gamers.html a time lapse photography piece about the intensity of the gamer. I’ve challenged James and Dani to create a time lapse video for Flourish so watch this space! Hopefully it’ll be a little more flattering than this one?

Passionate about design

It wasn’t until after university that James started designing, and as he says, he’s barely put his laptop down or picked up a camera since! James has been designing for the last three years and joined us in January, so brings with him a wealth of experience as well as sheer enthusiasm and fresh ideas.

James is inspired by creativity, the process of design and the challenges that brings. He particularly enjoys designing websites and the way they bring everything together; beautiful photography, illustation, icon, colour and how the challenge is to make it work in an interesting way and work in the space you have.

He’s open minded about his design style but takes inspiration from designers such as Mike Kus who works with interesting texture and really thinks through every small detail. His websites are completely different to what you normally see and that inspires James, in particular his amazing time lapse video of him working for Innocent, and the attention to detail that goes into that project.

James also loves the Form Fifty Five blog: the Falmouth influence in action! Isn’t it a nice foil to my girly design inspirations?!

Claims to fame: James once photographed London Fashion Week! He was assistant to a fashion photographer which has given him a huge visual awareness which he can bring through to everything he designs. That level of attention to detail – placing of every element, lighting, deconstructing the scenario is a great grounding. Now James enjoys experimenting and is excited about design.

And on a personal level

Outside of work, James’ life is mostly about football – he describes himself as pretty obsessive about football. Like any typical Surrey lad, James supports Man United. He plays 11 aside football at the weekend plus in the week for fun. That doesn’t leave much time for much else as James says that football takes over my weekend! He also goes snowboarding every year with a group of mates to the French alps. Oh to be in my twenties again…

3 Comments

Hi James – welcome to Flourish! I look forward to seeing your design work in the coming weeks & months, and who knows maybe I’ll meet you in person soon as I’m thinking of asking the wonderful Flourish team to undertake some more work for me soon! All the best, Denise

I know you’ll design some great things for clients of Flourish, but please pick up that camera again occasionally too, won’t you? The London images in your portfolio are wonderful (as are the others – but I just happen to like London as a subject and you have captured a particular aspect of London beautifully).

Thank you for your messages, I am really excited about being part of the Flourish team. The last couple of months have been great! I’ll hopefully get the chance to meet you both soon.
Clare -I’m pleased to say there is a camera in the studio, waiting for me to get my hands on!